Don't Give Capitalism Your Vote

"It's a nice idea but it will never happen" is one of the most common responses to the idea of building a socialist society. The assumption is that socialism will rely upon everybody sacrificing their own interests for those of others, that workers need to be saints and angels for it to work. In fact, socialism doesn’t require people to be any more altruistic than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. It is enlightened self-interest that will work for the majority. The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of others which capitalism encourages (acquisitiveness, competition.) Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguards, and leaders. 

Basically, there is only three ways of winning control of the State: (a) armed insurrection; (b) more or less peaceful mass demonstrations and strikes; (c) using the electoral system.

The Socialist Party has adopted (c), but without ruling out (b) or even (a) should conditions change (or in other parts of the world where conditions were different).

But this is not simply putting an “X” on a ballot paper and letting the Socialist Party and its MPs establish socialism for workers. The assumption is that there will be a “conscious” and active socialist majority outside Parliament, democratically organised both in a mass socialist political party and, at work-places, in trade union type organisations ready to keep production going during and immediately after the winning of political control.  The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority and they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule and they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control. The vote is merely the legitimate stamp which will allow for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the States and the end of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of real democracy. It is the Achilles heel of capitalism and makes a non-violent bloodless revolution possible.

But in this election, there is no candidates in Scotland. So what to do? The choice is between abstention and spoiling the ballot paper. Not voting at all is a valid option, but casting a spoiled ballot paper is better. One or two spoilt votes can be ignored, tens of thousands or even millions could not be – especially if backed by a vocal movement explaining what is happening. A concerted campaign of spoiling the ballot paper by writing “socialism” across it would signify a write-in vote.